n  So, I just finished The Long Walk for probably the 50th time, and it was as good this time as when I read it in 1985, at age 10.n

This King novel will forever be my favorite of all his works. Why? Because the words wiggle their way down into the very marrow of your bones and stay with you, ricocheting around your brain...for decades, apparently.

There isn't an author alive who utilizes characterization as well as Stephen King, and I'm honestly not sure there ever will be. Here is a story with 100+ characters, yet not once was I ever confused about who was who, and there was a very real visceral connection to several. I could literally feel Garraty's physical and emotional pain as he traipsed along those endless Maine roads.

This is a story people will either love or hate. I doubt there is much gray here. It's raw, it's bleak, and frankly, it's depressing. However, in contrast, it's incredibly complex, thought-provoking, sincere, and touching.

Me? I just hope to be able to read it another 50 times before I die, because this is some of the finest writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

5 road weary stars!

**I chose this book as a Book of the Month selection for my book club...I hope they all love it as much as I do.

First time read as a stand alone. This book haunts me- it's an exceptionally horrifying read, that focuses on the 100 teenage boys competing in the Long Walk endurance race, where there can only be one winner - the sole survivor!

Remarkably written (written before Carrie!) way back in the late 1960s, Richard Bachman AKA Stephen King was so prescient about the ends reality TV would/could lead to! 10 out of 12, a thumping Five Star Read

مشينا كتير تعبنا كتير
مشينا لوحدينا بعدنا
عرفنا الخوف ف عز النور
وبقينا نخاف من حبايبنا

ضيعنا أحلي سنين
وازاى هنقدر يوم نرجع
ده احنا يادوب عايشين
والدنيا دوامه بتخدع

في الأول من مايو من كل عام بعد عشرات الأعوام من الأن تنطلق المسيرة الطويلة. يتم الاقتراع على مائة شاب كلهم بلغ الثامنة عشرة سنة. في سباق للمشي يبدأ عند نقطة معينة و لا ينتهي إلا بفائز واحد هو من يواصل المشي للنهاية دون توقف للنوم أو الراحة أو أي نشاط أخر و بسرعة لا تقل عن ست كيلومترات و نصف كيلومتر في الساعة.
قد يبدو الأمر بسيطا و ساذجا و لكن دهشتنا سترتفع عندما نعلم أن كل متسابق له ثلاث إنذارات فقط و بعدها يشتري بطاقة خروجه من المسابقة. المدهش أن الخروج من المسابقة يعني الموت برصاص الجنود المصاحبين لفتيان المسيرة المتسابقين بقيادة الرائد الغامض الذي بيده مفاتيح كل شيء.
لماذا أول مايو؟ عيد العمال في الدول الاشتراكية مع أن عيد العمال الأمريكي في الأول من سبتمبر. هل لأن الدولة تحولت إلى شمولية أم للميول الاشتراكية لستيفن كينج التي تملأ ثنايا رواياته؟

احتجت لبعض الوقت لكي أفهم الأمر. لكن الأمور أصبحت أسرع بعد أن تخطيت هذا الحاجز الذهني. سِر أو مت. هذا هو مغزى هذه القصة. المسألة بهذه البساطة.

إنها مسيرة الحياة لا شك في ذلك. فنحن على الطريق منذ سن الثامنة عشر. سن المسئولية. بعدها تتعاقب علينا الإنذارات حتى نسقط صرعى في النهاية مهما مشينا.
يدفعنا كينج للتدبر في حياتنا. بداية من المسيرة إلى الجائزة إلى ستابنز الإبن غير الشرعي للرائد الذي يضحي به أبيه لإشعال المسابقة.

هذا كذب. قال ماكفريز بصوت مرتعش. لا يوجد فائز. لا جائزة.

لماذا نحن هنا؟

الكل لا يعرف لماذا هو هنا. لماذا شارك في المسيرة و ما الهدف في النهاية.
لا تكن مغفلا يا راي. المسيرة الطويلة ليست إلا جريمة قتل.

ما هي مواصفات الفائز بمسيرة الحياة؟

إنه وغد. و ربما هذا السباق يحتاج إلى وغد ليفوز فيه.

هل من معنى لكل هذا أم هو مجرد هراء؟

بدأت أرى شيئا في المسألة يا بيت. هناك نمط. ليست كل الأمور بلا معنى.

هل الأمر ممتع لأنه تافه أم تافه لأنه ممتع أم الأمران معا؟

السبب الذي يجعل كل هذا رهيبا جدا. هو أنه أمر تافه. أتعلم؟ لقد بعنا أنفسنا و قايضنا أرواحنا بتفاهات. اسمع. لا تأخذ الأمر على محمل الجد. إنه حقا ..أمر تافه.

بعد كل ذلك لا يستطيع أحد أن يفهم رغبة البشر في الحياة و كلهم في ذلك سواء. فمهما كنت شقيا أو سعيدا فأنت تتمسك بأهدابها و تسعى أبدا للبقاء.

لكن بوجود هكذا طريق طويل للسير عليه ... لا تزال تريد أن تعيش. و هذا هو حال معظم الأخرين. سيموتون ببطء. سيموتون الواحد تلو الأخر. قد أموت أنا أيضا. لكنني أشعر الأن كما لو أنه يمكنني السير حتى الوصول إلى نيو أورلينز قبل أن أسقط على ركبتي لكي يفرح أؤلئك المعتوهون الجالسون في عربتهم السخيفة.

قل لي إلى أين المسير. في ظلمة الدرب العسير. طالت لياليه بنا. و العمر لو تدري قصير.

البعض يظن أنها حلوة خضرة و البعض يحاول هزيمتها و الفوز بلذاتها و الكل يراها عفنة لا تساوي جناح بعوضة و في الوقت نفسه في ذلك يتنافس المتنافسون.

لا يمكنك أن تهزمها. لا يمكنك أن تهزم عفونتها.

فهل الحل كما قال على طاليباب خليها تتحرق.

سيبها تنزف سبع صفايح دم - لكل يوم اتكونت مجرة وكل ذرة اكسجين اتشم - سيبها تقطع الوريد سيبها تقطّر لأخر نقطة سم
خليها تتحرق .. اكتم نفسها تتخنق - اربط لسانها مفيش ولا صرخة تتنطق

هذه القصة لمجرد أن أحداثها تجري في عالم غير موجود أبدا لا يعني أنها قصة خرافية.

نظل نسعي في الحياة منذ أن نولد و نعرف في النهاية أن نهاية هذه المسيرة الطويلة هي الموت. و الموت فقط

أمضيت وقتا طويلا أفكر في الأمر. كلهم لم يفكروا فيه. بل فعلوه فقط. كما لو أنه أمر طبيعي. و هو طبيعي. إنه بطريقة أو بأخرى. أكثر أمر طبيعي في العالم.

بقالنا سنين ف نفس الليل
والحزن مغير ملامحنا
بنبكى مرار بحرقه ونار
والدمع بينزل يجرحنا

ضيعنا احلى سنين
وازاى هنقدر يوم نرجع
ده احنا يادوب عايشين
والدنيا دوامه بتخدع

لينك أغنية محمد فؤاد  مشينا كتير .
لينك أغنية علي طالباب  عن مضاجعة الواقع .
لينك أغنية عبدالحليم حافظ  ماشي الطريق .
لينك أغنية عبدالحليم حافظ  يا مالكا قلبي .

I loved this story when I read it. It was compelling. It's one of two novellas that was written by Richard Bachman that I like. This one gets it right.

It's brutal, but it was a foreshadowing of where our culture was heading. Not that we do things to the death yet, but these extreme competitions or reality shows are like this. I didn't have it in my GR and now I do.

DNF @ 24%

Teetering on the edge of a reading slump so I’m just going to give up on this as well as News of the World for the time being. Finding it pretty boring and the King sex stuff is bothering me more than King sex stuff usually does. Also if I ever have to read the word Jahoobies again I’m going to smash my head against a wall.

I listened to this audiobook while on a very long walk myself, an experience I highly recommend.

I loved this. I was surprised with how much character we received from a group of people walking. A great coming-of-age story, a great dystopian story. This is the exact kind of story that I feel like only Stephen King (or Richard Bachman) could write.

4.5 Stars ⭐️ Buddy read with my dear friend, Vickie!

The Long Walkers walked for days...exactly the same amount of time I lost reading the book.

I hate rating a book three stars. I really hoped to come out swinging here with a hot take on how awesome or how horrible The Long Walk is, but here I am, right in the middle. Right in the middle with nothing really important to say, but I do have more rambling thoughts masquerading as a review, so here goes...

This is a book about a long walk. There are rules. There are warnings and tickets. There are a bunch of teenage boys participating. There is a crowd of spectators watching. There is a major running things. And, yeah, the boys just basically walk until they don’t walk anymore for a variety of reasons.

Yeah, that’s the gist of how this thing goes, but the story was still engaging. There are a lot of characters mostly referred to by their last name, and they’re all out there walking around, having conversations, discussing the past and their hopes for the future. They’re walking, talking, doing their best to follow the rules, some of them stop walking, they get warnings, a lot of them get tickets, they walk some more.

I felt all invested in the story and found myself trying to figure out what this whole thing was all about, why this walking thing was going down, how there could be some big plot twist at the end that makes my real jaw drop and my proverbial jaw hit the floor. There was no payoff at the end though. It just kind of wraps up, I put it down, shrugged my shoulders, probably made an audible noise like “heh” or “hmm” or something. Then, I went and myself my legendary post-book sandwich and moved on with my life.

And now I’ll return to Stephen King and leave Bachman for a bit. On to The Dead Zone!

I've been going through a kind of mild Stephen King binge at the moment. I've mentioned before that I thought I wasn't a fan of the King and had given up on him for a while, but with my high enjoyment of his Dark Tower series, I've given him a second chance. This was not a bad idea.

The Long Walk intrigued me when I started hearing people say it was like The Hunger Games, but darker. While I can see where this comparison comes from - a televised game of kids competing  and the winner is the one who survives the rest (it's not really a spoiler and you find it out quite soon, I don't want to spoil it if you don't know anything else) - it's not really anything close.

It's much more intimate and deep, it's more human, and it's not nearly as ridiculous and over-the-top. It crushed me and made me appreciate what it's like to be alive.

This book details the journey of 100 boys (up to 18) competing in a televised competition called The Long Walk. There's a starting point and an ending destination and really only a few rules to follow. The winner reaches the end first without getting a ticket.

If you don't want things to really be spoiled (these are only mild spoilers if any), you may not want to keep reading. Just thought I'd warn if you want the "pure" experience.

At first, the whole concept of The Long Walk didn't really make sense to me. Who volunteers to join a competition where not only does everyone die but the winner, but everyone joining has also seen the end when the kids are obviously suffering.

The first thing that got me (and by "got me," I mean sucked me in and made this a favorite book of mine) was the kind of secret language that was used. King, I've noticed, likes to make you feel like you're in on something bigger or at least something that not everyone knows. You read his books, you can speak his language along with other "Constant Readers" as he terms it.

The first phrase is "getting a ticket." At first, I was pretty sure what this meant, it's not revealed right away, but very quickly you find out that these kids who get a ticket get shot. Soldiers line the race waiting for the time when a boy will slow down enough, stop, or leave the race area and that's when they get their "ticket."

Essentially, the winner is the sole survivor.

And that's how we get to the next part of this secret language. The "warnings." A boy is warned when he falls under the mandatory 4 miles per hour that all racers must keep up. Each boy gets three warnings and then they get their "ticket."

A warning can be gained back only by time. Each hour you walk without a warning, you gain a warning back. So, you get three warnings, it takes you three hours of walking at 4 miles per hour to get back to having zero warnings again.

While King exceeds at amazing concepts like this one (I still can't stop thinking about this), he's even better with his characters, Ray Garrity especially.

King uses a third-person limited point of view, telling the tale from Garrity's perspective. We learn of and become very close to his group of friends, we find out whatever gossip or information comes down the line from the front-runners, but we really find out what it's like to and means to someone to survive.

It's amazing how little it takes to get your ticket in a situation like this. I mean, think about it, you may be perfectly fine any other day, but what if this is the day your appendix decides to act up? What if today's the day you get a small cold, what could it turn into? What if you get a simple Charlie horse?

In this race, it's almost always deadly.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Ray Garrity contemplates these simple occurrences, but then things just keep getting worse as you can imagine, especially as the the Long Walk carries on and your feet get more than tired, and you haven't slept in days.

The Long Walk is a book I won't soon forget. I don't plan on rereading books very often, but I will definitely reread this one. The fact that this isn't even considered one of King's best works gets me really excited for what's to come.

4.5 out of 5 Stars

This is it. I’m breaking up with SK.

I read this one a very long time ago in a collection of the shorter works that Stephen King produced under the pen name Richard Bachman. I forget the circumstances that led to this pen name, but whether it was the motivation or merely a byproduct I do recall that King mused about the effort in terms of a re-run that would show whether it was skill or mere circumstance that had elevated his works to such bestselling status.

The Bachman books (IIRC) sold well, better than most writers do, but not in the staggering numbers King sells. And when he later claimed them, they sold a lot more.

One important factor in the success of any book - and one that King did not acknowledge, as far as I remember, is the marketing budget.

I know for a fact that my publishers can put any good book at #1 on the Sunday Times Bestseller lists for a week or two. Whether it stays there will depend on quite how commercial a book it is.

And I am pretty damn sure that whilst the Bachman books may not have got the Supermax Plus fanfare, a bunch of money was spent putting them in good spots in bookshops.

............ ANYWAY ..............

I'm a fan of Stephen King (apart from his endings, god love him), and I was a fan of the 5 Bachman books in my single volume collection Thinner (5*), The Running Man (4*), Road Works (3*), Fury (3*) and The Long Walk (5*).

The Long Walk is a very simple and fairly short tale. It does what it says on the tin/cover. It's a long walk. A death march in which several dozen volunteers (all young men) set off walking in a televised national event. Anyone who slows below 4 miles an hour gets 3 warnings and then is shot in the head. The last person walking wins some big prize. It's got a lot of The Hunger Games in it - young people contesting to the death on TV for political reasons. But all the killing is done by soldiers and only if you slow down/leave the course.

The real story is about the lads who volunteered to take part, their backstories, their experience and interactions on the walk, and their deaths. We see it all through the eyes of one competitor, who - and this really isn't a spoiler - lasts a long time in the contest.

It's great character writing in a small space. The source of tension is obvious and relentless. We see the characters under increasing stress as they start to realise they're going to die and their strength fails them.

This is the sort of thing King does best. And the ending is basically written in stone from the start, so it's a rare occasion where S.K sticks the landing pretty well.

Give it a shot.




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